Production Diary – Day 2

With our batteries charged and footage backed up we were ready for an early start on day two of production for Travel Warning.

Early rise

We stayed in a pretty rundown hotel, located in a cool little hutong, in downtown Beijing. We were only staying one night, and to be honest we could have slept anywhere after all of yesterday’s walking.

After devouring a couple of our huge back of apples, we dropped our key off to the person at reception (who was fast asleep on their makeshift bed).

On the road again

For second straight day, we had our enthusiastic tour guide Andy and our driver Mr Tian. It was roughly a 2.5-hour drive to the starting point at Jiankou Great Wall.

There wasn’t much footage to capture that we hadn’t got yesterday. Mainly driving shots.

We began our hike in some dense Forrest in a remote farmland. There wasn’t much in the way of signs, but we did manage to find the dirt path to begin our journey.

Mainly shots of the forest and our main character hiking to the top.

After an hour clambering up the mountain we get to the wall atop the mountain ridge. More shots of inside the tower and looking out onto the stunning mountain scenery.

The Great Wall Part II

Starting from Zhengbeilou Tower, we walked eastward ups and downs on the rugged wall along the mountain ridges past the wild and crumbling towers at Jiankou, and reach the restored and maginificent Mutianyu Great Wall. The hike took about 4-5 hours for 8km trekking.

One hour scale up a steep hill to reach the wall, 2 hour hike along the unrestored section starting from Zhengbeilou Tower at Jiankou (Including scrambling the steep section between the Upward Flying Eagle Tower and Zhengbeilou Tower ) and 1-1.5 hour walk along restored section at Mutianyu (with thousands of other tourists). Although it has since been restored, the Mutianyu Great Wall was initially built in 1404.

After so much walking for two straight days, we decided to go down from the wall by cable car.

Many believe the Jiankou Great Wall is the greatest and most photogenic section of the Great Wall around Beijing.

I would absolutely agree.

We managed to film some beautiful scenery and shots of our character traversing the terrain. Again, there wasn’t much shot at the wall that furthered the story, that is still yet to come.

At this point, we were tired, hungry and thirsty. A delicious lunch was had a local restaurant before returning to out next hotel – another hutong in central Beijing.

After resting out wearily feet for 15 minutes we managed to film an important scene where our two characters had just found a mode of transport to escape the madness.

Due to the fading light, we managed to just finish the scenes. After watching it later that night we decided we could film a bit more at first light.